A Turkish flag that traveled to the moon in 1971 aboard the Apollo 15 Endeavour spacecraft is now on display at the Istanbul Toy Museum, owned by poet Sunay Akın.

Akın said that a room for space-themed toys was the first he had in mind when designing the museum, and that space toys are among the most popular with collectors.

“In 1971, Apollo 15 went into space, and spent more time there than any other vehicle had at that time. NASA, in order to highlight space travel in the name of human kind, carried the flags of many countries to space, including a Turkish flag. It was carried by one of the three astronauts, Alfred Merrill Worden, and it has a signed certificate. The flag had been in the hands of space collectors in the U.S., and was put up for auction recently. Businessman Ekmel Anda, who lives in the U.S., purchased it and gifted it to the museum.”

Akın said the flag is on display in the museum’s space room.

“We [Turkey] did not carry it into space. I wish one of us had carried it to space. Why can’t we do this? Because we don’t still perceive the importance of toys,” Akın said.

First of its kind The Istanbul Toy Museum was established in the Göztepe neighborhood on the city’s Asian side in 2005 at a historical mansion owned by the poet’s family. The museum, which is the first of its kind in Turkey, exhibits nearly 2,000 toys collected by the poet himself from different countries throughout the world.